


cull company

by tiend



Series: writing wednesday prompts [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 16:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15174995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/pseuds/tiend
Summary: for finish-the-clone-wars prompt 'those who raised you' - the Kaminoans repurpose clones they might otherwise have killed to test equipment and the training curriculum, against the emotional involvement of the culls' commanding officers





	cull company

As a cost-saving measure, the Kaminoans suspended the culling program. Lama Su said “it would repurpose underutilised resources in order to maximise effective combat preparedness in nominal product”. All Kaivan understood is that he was responsible for children the longnecks would otherwise have had killed. They wanted a trial run of cadet equipment and Jango Fett’s curriculum. Both were untested, and after the disappointment of the Nulls and Alphas, they’d gotten fussy about resource waste.

So Kaivan’s culls got to go off planet first; got to test the cold weather gear first; got to lose toes to frostbite when the boot liners failed. They’d enjoyed the desert until they’d gotten radiation burns from the unfiltered sunlight. He and Ilfeth, his 2-I-C, had used up all of their personal bacta stashes on those, and some had scarred anyway. 

Kaivan had known he was emotionally compromised since the debacle of the boot liners. He just hadn’t figured out what he could do about it, trapped as he was on Kamino with the rest of the Cuy'val Dar. But he was backed into a corner now. The final SERE exercise for his eldest cohort was in a few short weeks, and Nala Se had asked him to write down his predictions so that she could identify and remediate knowledge gaps in viable product. 

So here he was, in his tiny office, staring blankly at his screen. He knew his culls: he knew which ones would have trouble, which ones would fail, which ones would die. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to write it down, not in the bland phrases the longnecks wanted. That would make it real in ways he couldn’t bring himself to think about. Instead he stared into space, hating himself, and running through endless scenarios in which he could smuggle all his platoons off Kamino. It was impossible; the longnecks might turn a blind eye to the small luxuries the trainers brought in for themselves, but smuggling that many children out? Couldn’t be done.

His culls - they tried so fucking hard. Scopes didn’t care if the eye sighting through them was blue or brown or green. Dapple’s vitiligo made no difference in CQC. They were smart and tough and just as good as any of the others, and they lived day to day on the Kaminoans’ sufferance. It had taken him weeks to convince them that the cull company should get the same nutritional rations as the rest of the cadets, and the thing that had done the trick in the end had been some rubbish about limiting confounding factors. 

The entire setup was a clusterfuck; if he’d been high enough on Jango’s shitlist to get assigned to the culls, Jango was perpetually at the top of his these days. What had the di’kut been thinking? Boba was a good kid, sure, but all his culls were good kids, too.

His 2-I-C stuck her shaved head around his door. 

“You got a minute, Sarge?” she asked. 

Glad for the distraction, Kaivan welcomed her in. She was a tall Mirialan woman, built like a brick shithouse, steady as they came. Her clan tattoos had been obliterated by a wide black horizontal bar going across her face from ear to ear. No one, not even that nosy shit Skirata dared ask her about it.

She produced a jammer, and he raised his eyebrows at her. Apparently it was going to be of those conversations. They were getting commoner these days. She hated this fishy shithole as much as he did - although she looked less grim now. Almost relaxed. Ilfeth flicked it on with her thumb, and tossed it onto his cluttered desk.

"Kaivan," she said. "Our kids. I know how we can get them out."


End file.
